THE BLOG

Budo is a UK based online community, selling fight wear and different martial art equipment. After failing to achieve a desirable result with the local designers, M. reached out to me for help. Here’s what we came up with.

the concept

During the design process I played around with these 4 main elements:

If you visit a Japanese temple, inside you can stumble upon a round window “The Window of Enlightenment” and a square one “The Window of Ignorance”, its sharp edges are like the impurities of the mind, whereas the round one represents a perfect state of mind – Nirvana.

Cracked Ice pattern – a design element usually used on windows in Asian architecture. The technique takes incredible amount of skill to master.

I love the simplicity and minimalistic look of Japanese Family Crests. We decided that Budo can stand for something more than just a shop, it’s a community of martial artists, sharing their experiences and helping each other.

2015
Nov 15

My Awesome Cafe is a place where experience feels real and authentic, a place where you can just be. My Awesome cafe is a union point of Eastern heritage and Western flare.

We set a challenge to create a logo where Chinese & English type co-exists as one, without overemphasizing one over another. From the very beginning we wanted to pay a tribute to the building – a former Ching Hwa Free Clinic (中华医院) which was build back in 1946, so the very first inspiration was captured at the Traditional Museum of Chinese medicine in Hangzhou, China.

The initial idea was to create a special atmosphere that can inspire creative people, so we proceeded with installing countless lightbulbs inside the cafe.

After that the team went on with logo creation.

Afterwards, team wandered if the logo can be turned into something that customer will be willing to purchase. “Is it possible for customer to be willing to buy staff’s uniform?” This way an idea of supporting logo was invented and was turned into a T-shirt.

Afterwards we came to a junction where we thought the logo can be pushed even further, the question was, how can we make it represent a strong sense of community. Can it be designed into an emblem that will unite awesome people together? This is where we came up with an idea of turning it into a badge.

Logo silkscreened on a shop front window.

Awesome!

2015
Sep 13

After creating a logo for Capoeira Hangzhou, I was approached by Praxis Martial Arts instructor to design a new visual identity for his group. The group doesn’t practice any specific kind of martial art. That’s why they wanted something more abstract.

process

First sketches and ideas.

inspiration

In search of the right feeling I rewatched the movie Grandmaster for the 5th time. After that I started to shape the figure.